What He Explores (What He Wants, Book Twenty-One) (4 page)

“Jesus,” Noah said when he saw. “What happened?”

“I’m fine,” she said. “It’s nothing.” She started to past us and out of the bathroom, but the bathroom attendant stopped her.

“Hey hey,” he said, grabbing her arm. “We had a deal.”

“But we didn’t even get to – ” Bella started. Then she sighed in frustration and took off her leather jacket and handed it to the man.

Payment.
For guarding the bathroom.

She started to leave again, to head back out into the station.

And then I noticed something strange.

The tattoo on her back.

The one I’d seen at the diner with Lameuix’s name on it.

It was still there, peeking out from the top of her pants, her crop top riding up just enough to show it.

But it was faint somehow, like she’d tried to cover it up with makeup.

“Hey!” I called, following her out of the bathroom and up the steps to the main concourse. She ran through the train station toward the doors that led to 42
^nd
Street. I kept following her, Noah close behind.

Bella glanced at me over her shoulder. “Stop following me,” she called, “or I’ll get you for harassment.” She pushed through the revolving doors and stepped out onto the street.

“Charlotte,” Noah said, putting his hand on my arm. “Charlotte, stop.” He pulled me close. “She’s a witness. A witness we need.
Stop.”

But I wasn’t going to stop.

I shook him loose and rushed out onto the street.

I spotted Bella a few feet away, standing by the cab stand.

“Why are you trying to cover your tattoo?” I demanded.

Bella froze. “I don’t know what you’re talking about,” she said. She reached into her bag and pulled out a cigarette, lit it and began to puff away.

“Please,” I said. “Please, whatever’s going on with you, we can help.”

Noah closed his eyes and sighed, like he couldn’t believe what I was doing. But I knew that if he was really that opposed to it, if he really thought that me questioning Bella was going to lead to something bad, he would have stopped me.

And not just verbally. He would have picked me up and tossed me over his shoulder, loaded me into his car, and took me home.

“That’s what you think I need?
Help?”
Bella shook her head. “God, you’re still just as condescending as ever.”

I was shocked at the ferocity of her tone. “First of all,” I said. “You had one conversation with me that lasted about three minutes. So you don’t get to tell me I’m just as ‘anything’ as ever, condescending or otherwise. And yes, I do think you need help.” I rolled my eyes. “Sorry if I’m a little concerned about someone who’s giving random blow jobs to strangers in a train station bathroom.”

“He wasn’t a stranger,” she said, taking a long drag on her cigarette. “He was Ricky.”

“Oh, he was
Ricky,”
I said sarcastically, and now I was getting really worked up. “Let me tell you something about Ricky.
Ricky
doesn’t give a fuck about you. He’s just as useless and dangerous to you as this cigarette!” The words made no sense. I knew it. But I couldn’t stop. And before I knew what was happening, I’d reached out and pulled the cigarette from her mouth, dropped it on the ground and put it out with the heel of my shoe.

Anger flashed in Bella’s eyes, and her mouth dropped open in shock.

For a second, I was sure I’d gone too far and that she was going to pull back and hit me.

“Charlotte,”
Noah said. “Come on. I’m taking you home.” He put his hand in the crook of my arm and began to lead me away.

“Wait,” Bella called. “Just...wait.”

I turned around.

She pursed her lips. “How much do you have?”

“What?” I asked.

“Money.” She rolled her eyes like she couldn’t believe how naïve I was. “How much do you have?”

“We can’t give you money,” I said. “It’s against the law. You’re a potential witness in a murder investigation.”

But Noah was moving back toward her, reaching into his pocket, pulling out his wallet. He pulled out a one hundred dollar bill.

She looked at him with an
“oh please”
look, and he added four more bills to the stack. Bella took them and shoved them into her bag.

“The tattoo wasn’t my choice..” She pulled out another cigarette and lit it with a red Bic lighter. “He paid me to get it.” Her hands had started to shake now, and she blew smoke into the air in a long, narrow plume.

“Who’s they?” Noah asked.

“Some guy.” She shrugged. “I don’t know his name. He paid me to get the tattoo, and he paid me to have those pictures taken.”

A sick feeling rolled in my stomach, thinking about those pictures, how she’d been beat up. Bella’s hands were still shaking and her eyes looked haunted and dead. Almost like Mikayla’s had looked that night at Force, like she was just a dried up husk that was a second from being blown away.

“What did he look like?” Noah demanded.

“He was short, dark hair.”

She took another drag off her cigarette, then tossed it onto the ground and dug it out with the toe of her boot. “He told me what to say if you came to look for me.” She swallowed and the far away look in her eyes intensified.

“What did he tell you to – ” I started, but the look in her eyes suddenly got replaced with one of panic and regret.

“Look, I’ve said as much as I’m going to say. I didn’t ask questions. They do things like that sometimes, you know, they…. some of the clients are into strange things. I didn’t think anything of it.” She shrugged, as if a man asking to tattoo her, beat her up and take pictures of her while she gave him a blow job was just another day at the office.

“Is there anything else you can tell us?” I asked. “Please, we really –”

“I don’t know anything else,” she said, and now she sounded annoyed. She took a few steps toward the row of waiting cabs that lined the sidewalk in front of Grand Central. She opened the back door of a taxi, then got in and said something to the driver, who took off heading uptown.

“Why did you do that?” I demanded, whirling around to confront Noah. “Why did you give her money like that?” It was against like five million laws, and he knew it. If anyone found out what he’d done, it would be considered witness tampering. Bella wouldn’t be allowed to testify at Lilah’s trial. And her testimony was extremely important – we needed it to show that Ryan Aqualino had a pattern of hurting women, so that Lilah’s story about self-defense would make sense to a jury.
“Because, Charlotte,” Noah said grimly. “She won’t be a witness at the trial. We’ll have to use the information she’s already given us to figure it out ourselves.”

“What do you mean she won’t be a witness at the trial?”

“If whoever did that to her finds out what she told us, they will kill her. Bella knows that. She will disappear now.”

He was walking back down the street the other way, moving away from the train station to where his car was parked on 42
^nd
Street. His gait was long, measured, and he was making notes in his phone as he went, probably about what Bella had just told us.

“So what does it mean?” I asked, my head spinning. “Why would someone fake pictures and put them on Ryan’s phone? And what the hell does Lameuix have to do with Lilah Parks?” My head was spinning in circles, trying to reconcile the two halves of the puzzle – that the Lilah Parks case might have something to do with Lameuix and therefore, the missing girls from Force.

“I don’t know,” Noah said. “But I’m going to find out.” We were at his car now, and he opened the passenger door and waited for me to get inside.

“How are you going to find out?” I demanded.

“I’m going to go see Lameuix.”

My eyes widened. “You know where he is?”

“I have some idea, yes.”

“When are you going to see him?”

“Right now.”

“Okay,” I said, nodding. “Okay, yeah, good idea. We’ll go see him. We’ll have to figure out how -”

“Not we, Charlotte.” His tone was stern and he nodded at the open door and gestured for me to get into the car.

“What do you mean not we?”

“You know exactly what I mean.”

I opened my mouth to protest, then immediately shut it. Noah was already on edge with my disobedience. It wouldn’t do to be disobedient again. I could already feel the need building up inside of him, and when it came out, I knew it would be intense. I remembered his words from a few moments ago.

It will hurt, Charlotte. It will hurt so good.

But I wanted to go.

I wanted to be a part of this.

If Noah went alone, he would keep things from me – when he came back, he wouldn’t tell me the whole story.

“Get in the car, Charlotte,” he demanded.

I shook my head. “No.”

“You are really beginning to try my patience.”

“If you don’t let me go, I’m just going to try your patience more,” I reported.

“Charlotte.”
“I’m serious,” I said. “Think about it. If you don’t let me go, I’m just going to start running around trying to figure things out for myself. You don’t want that, do you?”

“What I want is for you to follow the rules.”

“But –”

“Charlotte,” he said. “If you are not in the car by the time I count to three, I will pick you up and put you there. One…two…
three.”

I stayed rooted to the sidewalk, daring him to follow through on his promise.

A second later, he did, scooping me up and setting me gently in the passenger seat. He buckled my seatbelt around me and as he pulled back, he leaned down and spoke right into my ear.

“Don’t think you won’t pay for this later,” he said, his breath tickling my skin. “I
will
take this out on your body.”

And then he shut the door.

My hands clamped together in frustration, my mind working the problem over in my mind, trying to figure out a way to get Noah to agree to let me go with him.

The solution occurred to me as soon as he got in the car and started the engine.

“If you don’t let me go,” I said calmly. “I’ll go talk to the police while you’re gone.”

“I will lock you up,” he said just as calmly, guiding the car onto 42
^nd
Street and heading back uptown toward our apartment.

“Ha!” I said. “With who guarding me? The security guard who let Detective Rake bully his way right to our front door? Good luck with that.”

“Let me worry about who will be guarding you.”

“It won’t matter,” I said. “I’ll never be as safe as I am with you.” It was true.

Noah’s jaw twitched, his hands tightening on the steering wheel. He had no weaknesses except one – my safety.

I stayed quiet, watching as he mulled it over in his mind, trying to figure out where I was safer – with him and Lameuix, or here alone in the city.

“Fine,” he said. “But we’ll take the jet.”

“You have a jet?” I asked, shocked.

“Of course I have a jet, Charlotte. I’m a billionaire.”

“Are we going far away?”

“Not really.”

“Then why do we have to take the jet?”

“Because,” Noah said. “Detective Rake isn’t going to give up that easily. If he doesn’t hear from you soon, he will resurface. And when he does, it will not look good for you to have left the city.”

Detective Rake.

I’d almost forgotten.

God, he thought I’d killed Jason Cartwright. Nausea rolled through my body as I remembered the detective’s words.
Stabbed. Blood everywhere.

Suddenly, I felt light-headed, and I took a few long deep breaths until I felt better.

One crime at a time, Charlotte, I told myself. For now worry about Lameuix.

“
T
his is yours
?” I asked an hour later as Noah’s driver, Jared, pulled our car onto the tarmac at JFK. There was a shiny black jet waiting on the runway, its nose rising majestically toward the sky as if it were ready to take off at the push of a button. Which, I guess, technically, it was.

“Yes.” Noah had been distracted on the ride over, spending most of the time on his phone as he dealt with the other cases on his docket, scheduling court dates and coordinating with his junior associates.

He finished typing the email he was working on, then placed his iPad in his briefcase.

As he did, the sleeve of his plaid button-down slid up and flashed the face of his black Rolex. Apparently Lameuix was holed up at some compound in Upstate New York, and according to Noah it was in the middle of nowhere – so he’d insisted we stop at home and change before Jared drove us to the airport.

I was wearing a pair of jeans and a blue sweater. Noah was wearing jeans, too, but they were dark washed and expensive looking, his shirt navy blue and hunter green. Heavy brown Timberland boots encased his feet. He looked like a sexy lumberjack. A sexy lumberjack wearing a Rolex.

I giggled.

“Something funny?” Noah asked as he clasped his briefcase shut.

“It’s just… you’re wearing jeans and a plaid shirt and hiking boots, and your watch is……” I couldn’t stop laughing.

“I have no idea what you’re talking about, Charlotte.”

“It’s just that even when you’re trying to look normal, you’re just… “ I shook my head. “We’re supposed to look like we’re going hiking. Who wears a Rolex hiking?”

“Someone who wants to know what time it is,” he said, deadpan.

I giggled again.

“Oh, you think that’s funny?” he asked. “You think that’s funny, me in my Rolex?”

I nodded, and he reached across the back of the car and began to tickle me. I giggled and laughed and tried to squirm out from under him, but he took my hands and pushed them up over my head.

“Oh, it feels good to laugh,” I said, slightly breathless.

“I know something else that would feel good,” he breathed, brushing his lips across my collarbone. I shivered, remembering how bad I’d been today, wondering what he would do to me and when he would do it.

The sound of Jared’s voice came through the speaker in the back. “Sir?”

“Yes, Jared?” Noah said, as he kissed the hollow of my throat.